


we don't eat until your father's at the table (we don't drink until the devil's turned to dust)

by vixleonard



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Internal Monologue, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 16:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18832342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vixleonard/pseuds/vixleonard
Summary: It is just Arya's luck that the day she decides to live, the world seems determined to kill her.





	we don't eat until your father's at the table (we don't drink until the devil's turned to dust)

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "We Don't Eat" by James Vincent McMorrow (which is basically the theme song for House Stark)
> 
> Set from Arya's POV during episode 8x05

King’s Landing is falling on her head, and Arya thinks of her father.

“It isn’t a safe place, not like Winterfell,” he tried to warn her when they first rode into the city, Arya’s heart still broken after Mycah and Nymeria, her grand adventure already ruined because of fucking Joffrey and Sansa’s insistence on lying.

“It smells funny,” was all Arya said in response, the mixture of shit and sea air making her wrinkle her nose, and Ned laughed, ruffled her hair, told her she’d get used to it.

It smells like burning flesh and the iron tang of blood now.

If she survives, Arya knows she will never stop smelling it.

* * *

She wants her mother.

The mad thought hits her as the strange woman helps her to her feet, keeps her from being trampled beneath the panicked feet of the citizens trying to outrun death. Arya sees this woman and her daughter clinging to her arm, and she wants Catelyn Stark so bad in a way she hasn’t allowed herself to in years.

She hadn’t appreciated her mother enough when she had her. As she runs through the streets, she remembers one of the last times they’d been together, getting ready for the king’s feast at Winterfell. Her mother kept trying to flatten Arya’s hair, wiping at dirt on her face, brushing off her gown, and Arya resented it, being fussed over, being reminded she wasn’t as perfect as her sister, being treated like a baby as if she was Rickon’s age.

“You can’t make me pretty!” Arya spat, jerking out of Catelyn’s grasp, indignant and defensive and perpetually hurt that all her Tully beauty skipped her entirely.

And her mother looked so _hurt_ , like the words were an insult towards _her_ , and Arya hadn’t meant them that way, hadn’t meant to upset her, but she also didn’t know how to put into words all the complicated things in her chest. So instead her mother reminded her to use her manners and Arya told herself she’d apologize later for being a brat.

But Bran fell and there was no time to apologize and then…and then…

She loses the strange woman in the crowd with the same terrible ease with which she lost Catelyn.

* * *

The dragon makes another pass above her head, breathing death as it does, and Arya leaps over a fallen piece of rubble, casting a glance upwards towards the shadow. She thinks of the dragons at Winterfell, of the way they put down the White Walkers, and how happy and grateful she’d been for them then, for this wondrous weapon that would save them all.

Swords cut both ways. She’s so damned dumb for forgetting that.

Somewhere in the city is Jon. Arya thinks of that at first, thinks that everything will be okay if she can just get to him. But then she realizes that if Jon is in the city, if he’s still here and sees what Daenerys is doing and supports it, perhaps he is not the man Arya thought he was. 

Once when she was little, she’d asked Jon why their father never talked about beating Ser Arthur Dayne in single combat.

“He was the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms, and Father slew him!” she shouted, waving a stick around to represent Ice while Jon sat beneath the heart tree in the godswood, a smile on his face. “That means Father was the best swordsman in the whole world! Why won’t he talk about it?”

“Father isn’t the sort of brag.”

“It’s not bragging if it’s true.”

Jon, already so grown-up even then, shrugged. “Maybe it was a terrible thing. It can’t be easy to kill a man.”

“Father kills lots of men.”

“Deserters and criminals,” Jon corrected. “Everyone says Arthur Dayne was an honorable man. That must be harder.”

“If you did something heroic, would you tell me?”

Jon smiled indulgently. “Of course, I would. You’re my little sister.”

As Arya stumbles across yet another body, scorched beyond the point of recognizability, she hopes Jon never asks her about this.

* * *

She gags when she ducks into an alleyway and finds a man without a head.

Of all the things she’s done, all the death she’s handed out without a moment’s hesitation or guilt, the one sight that will never leave her is what the Freys did to Robb and Grey Wind. As she climbs over the headless man’s corpse, she closes her eyes, tries to remember something better.

Robb always had the best smile. She used to overhear the serving girls whisper about who was handsomer, Jon or Robb, and while the winner always varied, everyone agreed on Robb’s smile. It was bright and warm and made you feel like you were the only person in the entire world.

That last morning in Winterfell, he’d turned it on Arya, and she’d almost changed her mind, almost asked Father if she could stay with her big brother.

“You had better write me letters once a week,” Robb ordered when he swept her up in a hug, pulling back just enough to show her his smile, “and tell me about all the exciting things in the capital.”

“I will,” she swore, meaning it so much, trying to commit everything about him to memory: his auburn curls, the snowflakes melting in his hair, the brightness of his blue eyes, the warmth of his embrace.

But then they’d reached King’s Landing and she hadn’t sent a single letter, not one, and the world fell apart and Robb became a king and then he became a story, a legend, a cautionary tale.

They sing a song in Braavos about Robb called “The Young Wolf.” Arya sings it to herself as she leaves the headless body in her wake.

* * *

The collapse of a wall sends Arya reeling, stumbling backwards and over a young girl who is crouched behind her in terror. The girl is maybe three-and-ten, her long hair coated in dust and blood oozing from a wound on her head, and there is a stunned look to her face that tells Arya she isn’t fully aware of what is happening.

“Are you okay?” Arya asks the girl, shaking her shoulder, and it takes a moment for the girl to look at Arya and make eye contact.

“They rang the bells,” the girl mumbles. “They rang the bells.”

“Come on.” Arya tries to urge her to her feet, but the girl stays sitting on what’s left of the street murmuring, “They rang the bells.”

There is another crash behind them, and Arya knows she has to move. She hates to leave the girl, but she cannot save someone who does not want saved.

When they were children, Sansa loved stories about girls who needed rescuing. Arya remembered listening to her retell some legend for the hundredth time, and when Sansa sighed after the handsome knight rescued the princess, Arya asked, “Why can’t she save herself?”

Sansa glared at her. “Because that’s not the story. And it isn’t romantic if he doesn’t rescue her.”

“Why does it have to be romantic? Life isn’t always romantic.”

“But it _should_ be.” She sniffed. “My life will be.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m a good lady, and good ladies get what they want.”

Sansa didn’t get what she wanted, and she certainly didn’t get what she deserved. Arya wonders if the bleeding girl thought that life would be decent and fair too.

* * *

The explosions stop her retreat, and Arya stares in confusion for a moment at the bursts of green flame above the buildings. And then it strikes her: _wildfire_.

She never cared for her histories much and Maester Luwin knew she was hopeless at them, but she remembers the stories about the Mad King and how he’d burned her Uncle Brandon and Grandfather Rickard alive, how he’d kill his enemies with wildfire. During the planning of the Battle of Winterfell, Tyrion Lannister suggested wildfire, and Bran said no, said something about the things he’d seen that made it the wrong choice.

Starting to run again, Arya thinks of how she and Bran were meant to come to King’s Landing together all those years ago. If he hadn’t fallen, how different would their lives have been?

The morning he fell, they were supposed to be together. They were going to go climbing in the godswood, scaling up the twisted branches of the weirwoods, but she’d gotten mouthy with Septa Mordane and was ordered to stay inside.

“Why can’t you just behave?” Bran asked her when Arya reported the only way she was getting out of the castle was to sneak out and risk an even worse punishment.

“Why do you always think it’s my fault?”

Bran grinned, shaking his long hair out of his eyes. “Because it usually is.”

“I’m going to punch you.”

He laughed, dancing out of her reach. “If I see anything good, I’ll tell you.”

But whatever he saw that day, she never learned because Ser Rodrik saw him fall from the tower and then he was asleep and by the time he was awake again, they were gone. And now, even though he was still here, Bran was gone too, replaced by some strange creature that wore Bran’s skin but had none of the things that made him Arya’s little brother.

Yet even as she wipes blood out of her eyes, Arya decides she will go home and be grateful for what little bit of Bran she has left if she can just make it there.

* * *

The sight of the little girl with the horse toy and her kind mother turned to ash in the street breaks something in Arya.

She’d wanted to save them _so much_ , wanted to see them to safety. Even after the Dothraki blade opened the mother’s back, even when Arya knew she didn’t have the strength to carry her to safety, she wanted to do it. She’d tried to save them both, but the girl wanted to stay with her mother and now…

Rickon had a toy like that. It was a carved direwolf, and he’d carried it everywhere before they got their pups. She thinks Jory Cassel may have carved it for him, but she can’t remember. All she remembers is Rickon and the toy.

He used to bring it to supper, would make it growl at her as she cut her meat. Sometimes she’d be annoyed by it, but usually Arya smiled. Sometimes she growled back, making Rickon giggle, and sometimes she’d offer a bit of meat to his “wolf” as a peace offering. He’d make it lope across the table, one time even upending Arya’s cup of honeyed milk into her lap, and rather than shout about it the way she would’ve if Sansa or Bran did it, she just sopped it up and pretended she did it herself when her mother demanded to know what happened.

“He’s just a baby,” she said when Sansa complained he was too big to be carrying around the toy.

Except now Rickon is another statue in the crypts, forever her baby brother who never reached manhood just like this little girl, and Arya does not understand why such evil people get to live to old age while little ones like this are taken.

* * *

The Red Keep collapses, and for the first time since this nightmare started, Arya smiles. If the castle is destroyed, then Cersei is dead and the Mountain, too.

Just being back inside that terrible place reminded her of the last time, of dancing practice and Syrio and Meryn Trant. When she started to cross the floors, she felt like she was nine-years-old again, witness to something she didn’t understand and still somehow understood was horrendous.

It was an act of love, what Syrio did that day. For years she didn’t understand why Syrio instinctively fought, allowing her to escape; she was nothing to him, just a girl whose father paid for his time and knowledge. But he’d saved her life that day, and so many days since then with his lessons. She may have killed Meryn Trant years ago, Cersei was just as responsible for Syrio’s death as she was her father’s. Her orders, her lies, her machinations took away everyone who mattered to Arya.

“We use our skills to defend ourselves and to defend others,” Syrio told her once when she said she wanted to punish Joffrey for what happened to Mycah, Lady, and Nymeria. “Any man can swing a sword and take a life. What we do, is art.”

Arya isn’t certain if there is art in death anymore, but there is something satisfying about watching the symbol of her enemy’s power literally crumble to the ground.

 _Sandor was right_ , she realizes as the castle somehow continues to fall. _I would’ve died with him._

If she learned anything at the House of Black and White, it is that a man should get to choose his death. Sandor Clegane lived a hard life, and Arya understood why he was ready to meet the God of Death so long as it meant his brother did too. Arya thought she’d been ready for it, that it would be worth it to see Cersei die.

Cersei did not get to choose her death, and if there is one silver lining to this day, it is that: when the God of Death came for Cersei Lannister, not even that poisonous blonde monster could escape it.

But still, just for a moment, Arya closes her eyes and says a prayer to whatever gods will listen that Sandor Clegane finds peace.

Then she laughs because he would call her a real cunt for even thinking it.

* * *

She rides the horse to the strange camp of Northmen, surviving Lannister men, a few Golden Company men, and civilians who managed to make it out of the city. Her skin is tacky with blood, she feels as if she has inhaled more ash than air, and there is a bone-weary exhaustion to her she’d never felt. When she slides from the horse’s back, the horse wanders away, and Arya thinks of Nymeria somewhere in the Riverlands.

“Jon Snow,” she says to a Northman, who waves an arm in no particular direction, and Arya limps that way because there is nowhere else to go.

The tent she enters has a group of men inside she recognizes: Jon, Tyrion, Ser Davos. And then she sees him standing near the table in Baratheon colors, the look on his face as startled as the others, and her heart cracks.

“Arya!” Jon gasps, moving towards her, but she side steps him, waving away his touch, and stumbles forward until she reaches Gendry. To her relief, he doesn’t push her away; instead he wraps his arms around her before pulling back enough to look at the wounds on her head.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and she just shakes her head because she is not sure if she’ll ever be okay again.

To her relief, Jon does not ask questions. They send for fresh clothes for her, for fresh water to bathe as best she can, for someone to help stitch her head. Gendry does not move from her side, and she keeps squeezing his hand to reassure herself he is there.

He squeezes back every time.

When she is stitched, reasonably clean, and wearing what she thinks might be Tyrion Lannister’s clothes, Gendry finally asks, “Did you finish your list?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She looks at him, touches the line of his jaw, and manages, “You look very fine, Lord Baratheon.”

He blushes. “Jon had me call the banners. I didn’t even know what that meant.”

“It’s a lot to learn.” Thinking of Sandor, of his words in that damned castle, she ventures, “I could help you, if you’d still like me to. I could…All of it, if you still want me.”

Gendry nods at once. “Of course, I still want you.”

Arya lays down on the cot, resting her head in Gendry’s lap. She can tell he is startled, but she doesn’t care. Closing her eyes, she says, “We have to kill the queen first.”

Gendry cards his fingers through her wet hair. “Sleep first.”

For the first time in her life, Arya doesn’t think to argue. She drifts off, trying to imagine what world she will wake to and how they will make it right.


End file.
